She flinches.
“You were not my woman when I fucked you. You were not my woman when you walked into that garage. You’re not my woman now. And if I ever let you think different because I was too guilty to be cruel, that ends right here.”
Her mouth opens, but nothing comes out.
I need it to hurt.
I need it settled.
“I will make sure your sister and niece are protected,” I say. “Not because you earned it. Because they didn’t hand Lady to anybody. After that, you don’t call me unless a club officer tells you to. You don’t text me. You don’t show up where Lady is. You don’t say her name unless you’re answering a question. You understand?”
Cherry wraps both arms around herself.
“I loved you.”
“No,” I say, and my voice finally roughens. “You loved the man who picked you up off a bathroom floor because you needed him to mean more than the blood. I let you keep loving that version because it made me feel less like the bastard who may have put some of the blood there. That is on me. What you did with it is on you.”
Her face folds.
Vice watches me with something like approval, which makes me want to punch him on principle.
Diablo leans forward. “Who contacted you?”
Cherry wipes her face with shaking fingers. “A woman first. Private number. She sounded expensive.”
“Carmen,” Magic says.
“Maybe. I don’t know. She said I was being replaced by a whore who liked bikers until they stopped being fun.”
My hand curls on the table.
Diablo’s voice cuts through before mine can. “Careful repeating words you don’t want to own.”
Cherry nods fast. “Then men started texting. Pictures of my sister. My niece. My apartment. They said they only needed access. They said they would leave a rose and scare her. They said if Lady ran back to her famous life, Shady would remember who stayed.”
Magic mutters, “Jesus.”
“Wrong building,” I say.
He looks at me.
“What?”
“We’re in a church. Jesus heard and declined to participate.”
Vice snorts despite himself.
Diablo’s mouth doesn’t move, but his eyes almost do.
Cherry stares at me like I’m insane. Fair. I feel insane. Lady is gone, Carmen’s name is all over the smoke, and the woman who may have lost my baby is crying across from me because she helped put the woman I want in chains.
If I don’t smart off, I might start screaming.
Alpha taps the tablet. “The text chain used phrasing connected to two known Mutherfuker hangarounds and one unknown female contact. C.S. also appears in metadata from the photo of Cherry’s niece. Not proof, but enough to assume Carmen’s orbit.”
“Carmen doesn’t get touched until we can make it stick,” Diablo says.
My head turns. “The fuck she doesn’t.”